reduction in their risk of the cancer coming back. So in other words, soy seems to be protective. Having said that, soy products are totally optional. A healthful plant-based diet could follow a Mediterranean pattern based on vegetables and fruit and pasta. It could follow a Latin American pattern with beans and tortillas. Or it might follow an Asian pattern, which is where soy products come in. Soy does not increase cancer risk. It does quite the reverse, but you don't have to have it if it is not your thing.
JOHN ROBBINS: Cancer is a terrifying prospect in a lot of people's lives, and rates have been increasing. You founded The Cancer Project. What is the organization doing, and why is its work so important?
DR. NEAL BARNARD: This is near and dear to my heart. My father was diagnosed with prostate cancer when he was in midlife and he had a miserable time with it. So many people know nothing at all about what leads to cancer or what might help prevent it. But we have abundant evidence that foods play a big role. The Cancer Project offers nutrition and cooking classes in cities across the United States. If you live in Pittsburgh or Los Angeles or Seattle or in one of a hundred other cities, you can come on in and there will be others just like you who want to know about how foods can protect you against cancer or help after diagnosis. You will learn about nutrition and cancer, and will have a chance to stir the spaghetti sauce, and can even bring your reluctant spouse in too, so that we are all learning together. We have instructors, we have books, we have videos, and we have a website, which is www.cancerproject.org.
My aspiration is that instead of only hoping for research to find a cure, or just hoping that a mammogram or a PSA test will find your cancer early enough, we can go another step. I hope we can use foods to prevent cancer so that it never has to happen in the first place.
JOHN ROBBINS: You have been at this for many decades now. When you look back on these years and on your work, what has surprised you?
DR. NEAL BARNARD: Everything surprises me. It surprises me that Bill Clinton, a President who was known for jogging to the nearest fast-food chain and eating junk food, and who was gaining weight and looking less and less healthy, finally decided to change. He not only adopted a plant-based diet, but he decided to tell the whole world. He went on television saying that the change was not so hard, and encouraging others to give it a try.
It surprises me that in almost every school in America, students are asking for vegetarian or vegan choices.
But it also surprises me that the people working for the meat, dairy, and junk-food industries persist not only in producing unhealthful products, but also in fighting efforts to change what is in school lunches, and what is in the food stamp (SNAP) program. Even though their own families are at risk and they themselves are paying a price for unhealthy eating habits, they fight to keep the worst foods front and center on the American plate.
So frankly, everything surprises me. But what can you do? Life is short. You have to just work as hard as you can to get the word out. And over time people really do take this knowledge in hand, and they share it with other people they know. The most important thing is that they share it with their kids, because that will change the fundamental direction in which we're headed.
JOHN ROBBINS: Many things that I had once thought were controversial have over time become mainstream. Things that had been bitterly fought are now being taken as self-evident. At this point in history, at this point in the arc of change, what steps would you like to see people take?
DR. NEAL BARNARD: We need to think societal change. The Internet enables us to reach many, many people with the click of a button. That is great, and we need to use it. We also need to leverage the power of business. We have been working with a number of businesses now, including the GEICO insurance company that is known for its cute, green lizard icon. GEICO instituted plant-based diets at ten of its thirteen facilities around the United States, so that their employees could try it, taste it, and adapt to healthier meals. And we have tracked the results. In our first GEICO study over the course of 22 weeks, employees lost an average of 11 pounds, and saw their blood-pressure levels drop. They also missed less days from work. We published those findings in the American Journal of Health Promotion.
We need to work for societal change, because the price of bad food habits is simply too high. Americans now eat more than a million animals every hour. And many more are consumed elsewhere around the world. The environment is degrading faster than many of us had ever thought, and human health is paying a terrible price for our current shortsightedness.
JOHN ROBBINS: What is the food revolution that you would like to see take place?
DR. NEAL BARNARD: My hope is that what is on the plate will be different and that what is growing in the fields will be different, as well. In turn, animals will have an entirely different experience—that is, they will no longer be considered dinner. When I went downtown yesterday to a meeting, I went into a large office building. There was a man outside finishing up his cigarette before he could go into his nonsmoking building. And I hope that, ten or twenty years from now, that same guy will be standing outside finishing up his chicken wing before he is allowed to go into his vegan office building.
JOHN ROBBINS: There are so many people today waking up to the reality that the industrial food machine is spewing out and advertising to our kids some of the most unhealthy foodlike substances imaginable. The price we are paying for it as individuals, as families, and as a society, is exorbitant. Yet so many of the policies of our government have reinforced and supported the industrial food machine: feedlot agriculture, Monsanto, McDonald's, factory farms, and even now, genetically engineered foods. In the face of the momentum of that and all the lobbyists down in Washington, what are the steps that a group of people can take to make a difference politically?
DR. NEAL BARNARD: Every five years, Congress decides what the agricultural subsidy programs are going to look like as it formulates the Farm Bill. Up until this point, the U.S. Government gives almost nothing to vegetables and fruits, and it gives huge subsidies to animal agriculture. The biggest part of the Farm Bill is the SNAP Program—the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which used to be called Food Stamps. The program is well intentioned—it is supposed to provide food for needy people. However, the program has become largely a service for the junk-food industry. Other food-assistance programs provide reasonably healthy food. The WIC program, which serves women, infants, and children, is limited to a finite list of foods that are more or less healthful. School lunches have at least some limitations now as well. For example, you can't serve sugary sodas in most school lunches. The SNAP program is different and is not remotely health conscious. It does cover vegetables and fruits and grains and beans, but it also covers sausage, cheese, Red Bull, candy, potato chips, and sugary sodas. The fact is, convenience-store operators who operate in neighborhoods in “food deserts” are reimbursed just as well for junk food as they are for fresh fruits and vegetables. As a result, they have no incentive for stocking anything other than candy and packaged snacks. They are not going to put an orange or some fresh spinach on the shelf because fresh things have a shorter shelf life. If the food stamps pay for potato chips and other things that have a longer shelf life, economic pressures favor the worst foods. Small wonder that economically disadvantaged people are at higher risk for obesity and diabetes, compared with their wealthier counterparts.
We would like to limit the SNAP program to those foods that are healthy: grains, beans, vegetables, and fruits, whether they are fresh, frozen, or perhaps in a can. If the retailers were only compensated with government money for healthful foods, it would spell the end of food deserts. The result would be that needy folks who are now paying a terrible price for the junk food avalanche that is all around them could instead become the healthiest people in America.
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Dr. T. Colin Campbell
Is Animal Protein Good for You?
T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D., has been at the forefront of nutrition